COVINGTON, Ga. — A Covington man has been charged with Sexual Exploitation of Children (Distribution of Child Pornography). 

Johnny Jay Farino, 65, was charged July 13 after an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes (CEACC) Unit, with the assistance of the Newton County Sheriff’s Office, and the Georgia Department of Community Supervision.

The GBI executed a residential search warrant pertaining to an ongoing Sexual Exploitation of Children investigation which began after the GBI CEACC Unit received a cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). 

The cybertip involved the possession and/or distribution of explicit child sexual abuse material, commonly referred to as child pornography, which resolved to Newton County.

As a result of the search warrant execution, Farino was charged with Sexual Exploitation of Children (Distribution of Child Pornography). 

At the time of his arrest, Farino was on the Georgia Sex Offender Registry after he was arrested in 2011 by the GBI and the Newton County Sheriff’s Office for the Sexual Exploitation of Children.

Farino was taken to the Newton County Jail.

This investigation is part of the ongoing effort by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, housed within the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit, to identify those involved in the child pornography trade. 

The ICAC Program, created by the U.S. Department of Justice, was developed in response to the increasing number of children and teenagers using the Internet, the proliferation of child sexual abuse material, and the heightened online activity by predators searching for unsupervised contact with underage victims.

Anyone with information about other cases of child exploitation is asked to contact the GBI Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit at 404-270-8870.